Storm Watchers

Calling things by their proper names

by Caroline Glick

November 25, 2011, 10:20 AM

Next month, America’s long campaign in Iraq will come to an end with the departure of the last US forces from the country.

Amazingly, the approaching withdrawal date has fomented little discussion in the US. Few have weighed in on the likely consequences of President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw on the US’s hard won gains in that country.

After some six thousand Americans gave their lives in the struggle for Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the war, it is quite amazing that its conclusion is being met with disinterested yawns.

The general stupor was broken last week with The Weekly Standard’s publication of an article titled, “Defeat in Iraq: President Obama’s decision to withdraw US troops is the mother of all disasters.”

The article was written by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan and Marisa Cochrane Sullivan. The Kagans contributed to conceptualizing the US’s successful counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as “the surge,” that president George W. Bush implemented in 2007.

In their article, the Kagans and Sullivan explain the strategic implications of next month’s withdrawal. First they note that with the US withdrawal, the sectarian violence that the surge effectively ended will in all likelihood return in force.

Iranian-allied Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is purging the Iraqi military and security services and the Iraqi civil service of pro-Western, anti- Iranian commanders and senior officials. With American acquiescence, Maliki and his Shi’ite allies already managed to effectively overturn the March 2010 election results. Those elections gave the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya party led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi the right to form the next government.

Due to Maliki’s actions, Iraq’s Sunnis are becoming convinced they have little to gain from peacefully accepting the government.

The strategic implications of Maliki’s purges are clear. As the US departs the country next month it will be handing its hard-won victory in Iraq to its greatest regional foe – Iran.

Repeating their behavior in the aftermath of Israel’s precipitous withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the Iranians and their Hezbollah proxies are presenting the US withdrawal from Iraq as a massive strategic victory.

They are also inventing the rationale for continued war against the retreating Americans. Iran’s Hezbollah-trained proxy, Muqtada al-Sadr, has declared that US Embassy personnel are an “occupation force” that the Iraqis should rightly attack with the aim of defeating.

The US public’s ignorance of the implications of a post-withdrawal, Iranian-dominated Iraq is not surprising. The Obama administration has ignored them and the media have largely followed the administration’s lead in underplaying them.

For its part, the Bush administration spent little time explaining to the US public who the forces fighting in Iraq were and why the US was fighting them.

US military officials frequently admitted that the insurgents were trained, armed and funded by Iran and Syria. But policy-makers never took any action against either country for waging war against the US. Above the tactical level, the US was unwilling to take any effective action to diminish either regime’s support for the insurgency or to make them pay a diplomatic or military price for their actions.

As for Obama, as the Kagans and Sullivan show, the administration abjectly refused to intervene when Maliki stole the elections or to defend US allies in the Iraqi military from Maliki’s pro-Iranian purge of the general officer corps. And by refusing to side with US allies, the Obama administration has effectively sided with America’s foes, enabling Iranian-allied forces to take over the US-built, trained and armed security apparatuses in Iraq.

ALL OF these actions are in line with the US’s current policy towards Egypt. There, without considering the consequences of its actions, in January and February the Obama administration played a key role in ousting the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world, president Hosni Mubarak.

Since Mubarak was thrown from office, Egypt has been ruled by a military junta dubbed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Because SCAF is comprised of the men who served as Mubarak’s underlings throughout his 30-year rule, it shares many of the institutional interests that guided Mubarak and rendered him a dependable US ally. Specifically, SCAF is ill-disposed toward chaos and Islamic radicalism.

However, unlike Mubarak, SCAF is only in power because the mobs of protesters in Tahrir Square demanded that Mubarak stand down to enable civilian, majority rule in Egypt. Consequently, the military junta is much less able to keep Egypt’s populist forces at bay.

Throughout Mubarak’s long reign, the most popular force in Egypt was the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. The populism unleashed by Mubarak’s ouster necessarily rendered the Brotherhood the most powerful political force in Egypt. If free elections are held in Egypt next week as planned and if their results are honored, within a year Egypt will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the outcome Obama all but guaranteed when he cut the cord on Mubarak.

Recognizing the danger a Brotherhood government would pose to the army’s institutional interests, in recent weeks the generals began taking steps to delay elections, limit the power of the parliament and postpone presidential elections.

Their moves provoked massive opposition from Egypt’s now fully legitimated and empowered populist forces. And so they launched what they are dubbing “the second Egyptian revolution.”

And the US doesn’t know what to do.

In late 2010, foreign policy professionals on both sides of the aisle in Washington got together and formed a group called the Working Group for Egypt. This group, with members as seemingly diverse as Elliott Abrams from the Bush administration and the Council on Foreign Relations, and Brian Katulis from the Center for American Progress, chose to completely ignore the fact that the populist forces in Egypt are overwhelmingly jihadist. They lobbied for Mubarak’s overthrow in the name of “democracy” in January and February. Today they demand that Obama side with the rioters in Tahrir Square against the military. And just as he did in January and February, Obama is likely to follow their “bipartisan” advice.

FROM IRAQ to Egypt to Libya to Syria, as previous mistakes by both the Bush and Obama administrations constrain and diminish US options for advancing its national interests, America is compelled to make more and more difficult choices. In Libya, after facilitating Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow, the US is faced with the prospect of dealing with an even more radical regime that is jihadist, empowered and already transferring arms to terror groups and proliferating nonconventional weapons. If the Obama administration and the US foreign policy establishment acknowledge the hostile nature of the new regime and refrain from supporting it, they will be forced to admit they sided with America’s enemies in taking down Gaddafi.

While Gaddafi was certainly no Mubarak, at worst he was an impotent adversary.

In Syria, not only did the US refuse to take any action against President Bashar Assad despite his active sponsorship of the insurgency in Iraq, it failed to cultivate any ties with Syrian regime opponents. The US has continued to ignore Syrian regime opponents to the present day. And now, with Assad’s fall a matter of time, the US is presented with a fairly set opposition leadership, backed by Islamist Turkey and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The liberal, pro-American forces in Syria, including the Kurds, have been shut out of the post-Assad power structure.

And in Egypt, after embracing “democracy” over its ally Mubarak, the US is faced with another unenviable choice. It can either side with the weak, but not necessarily hostile military junta which is dependent on US financial aid, or it can side with Islamic extremists who seek its destruction and that of Israel and have the support of the Egyptian people.

HOW HAS this situation arisen? How is it possible that the US finds itself today with so few good options in the Arab world after all the blood and treasure it has sacrificed? The answer to this question is found to a large degree in an article by Prof. Angelo Codevilla in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books titled “The Lost Decade.”

Codevilla argues that the reason the US finds itself in the position it is in today owes to a significant degree to its refusal after September 11, 2001, to properly identify its enemy. US foreign policy elites of all stripes and sizes refused to consider clearly how the US should best defend its interests because they refused to identify who most endangered those interests.

The Left refused to acknowledge that the US was under attack from the forces of radical Islam enabled by Islamic supremacist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran because the Left didn’t want the US to fight. Moreover, because the Left believes that US policies are to blame for the Islamic world’s hostility to America, leftists favor foreign policies predicated on US appeasement of its enemies.

For its part, the Right refused to acknowledge the identity and nature of the US’s enemy because it feared the Left.

And so, rather than fight radical Islamists, under Bush the US went to war against a tactic – terrorism. And lo and behold, it was unable to defeat a tactic because a tactic isn’t an enemy. It’s just a tactic.

And as its war aim was unachievable, the declared ends of the war became spectacular. Rather than fight to defend the US, the US went to war to transform the Arab world from one imbued with unmentionable religious extremism to one increasingly ruled by democratically elected unmentionable religious extremism.

The lion’s share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs lies with former president Bush and his administration. While the Left didn’t want to fight or defeat the forces of radical Islam after September 11, the majority of Americans did. And by catering to the Left and refusing to identify the enemy, Bush adopted war-fighting tactics that discredited the war effort and demoralized and divided the American public, thus paving the way for Obama to be elected while running on a radical anti-war platform of retreat and appeasement.

Since Obama came into office, he has followed the Left’s ideological guidelines of ending the fight against and seeking to appease America’s worst enemies. This is why he has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is why he turned a blind eye to the Islamists who dominated the opposition to Gaddafi. This is why he has sought to appease Iran and Syria. This is why he supports the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition. This is why he supports Turkey’s Islamist government. And this is why he is hostile to Israel.

And this is why come December 31, the US will withdraw in defeat from Iraq, and pro- American forces in the region and the US itself will reap the whirlwind of Washington’s irresponsibility.

There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.

Former Black Panther Warns Conservatives of 2012 Violence

Former Black Panther and left-wing activist Brandon Darby told a packed East Orlando Tea Party this week that he left the Black Panthers because basically he loves America. He said he just couldn’t take it anymore when he happened upon a video training session by anarchist leaders showing gullible young men how to make Molotov cocktails to shut down the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008.

”Anarchists were showing videos of throwing Molotov cocktails at corporate systems,” Darby said. The ingredients were bought at a local big box and built using tampons as wicks with oil laced into the gasoline “to better stick to the skin,” like homemade napalm. Darby said something snapped in his consciousness when these radicals began openly calling for shutting down the convention by any means possible, simply because they didn’t like what the Republicans and Sarah Palin were saying.

“That’s bullying,” he said. Giving a heads-up to organizers for the August 27, 2012, GOP convention at the Tampa Convention Center, the now conservative forum speaker is warning what could happen again. He said a definite structure of planners had set up a three part division of responsibilities in the leftist camp:

The Reds, the hardcore anarchists dressed in black, whose sole aim was to fight the police;

The Yellows, who were tasked with blocking roads to the Xcel site; and

The Greens, a loosely knit collection of about 10,000 routine protestors.

“I want to get those who want to destroy our country,” he told thecConservatives in a big media event ignored by the local print outlet in a new expression of liberal bias by omission. The liberal media at the time, in typical progressive media-speak, said Darby exhibited a “hyper-masculinity” that led astray the gullible youths who had plans to lob gasoline bombs into a parking lot of cop cars. These two young men, however, received jail terms.

Darby is a great example of the virtues writers praised years ago. A runaway at an early age, he wandered through teen runaway life before getting sucked into the Black Panther Party. Darby turned FBI informant after meeting Police Major John Bryson, who was in charge of New Orleans’s famed Ninth Ward. After Bryson rescued a former Panther stranded by Katrina, he started to realize that police do care and that “not all cops are pigs.”

What really convinced him to follow the right path was the fact that more than 20,000 brilliant leftists could not establish order out of the Katrina chaos. When he looked out over his audience, he said, “I knew I did the right thing.”

He made a right turn to save his beloved country from the same kind of chaos he sees coming to overtake all of America.

According to the Arizona Star, all of the case information gathered by federal prosecutors is now unavailable, “apparently sealed by a federal judge.”

“Our office is handling the case and can’t comment further,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego.

The prosecution of illegal alien Manuel Osorio-Arellanes for the December 2010 Terry killing was originally to be handled by Phoenix U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. But it was Burke’s office that meticulously directed the Arizona-based portion of the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation for Attorney General Eric Holder, advising Phoenix ATF Agent in Charge Bill Newell every step of the way in the “loss” of 2,000 firearms across the Mexican border. When Burke resigned in a fit of panic as a result of the continuing investigation of his conspiratorial Fast and Furious misdeeds by the Grassley/Issa congressional committees, the Terry case was transferred to San Diego.

And now the file is gone along with every scrap of information it contained. How many key items, how many records preserved in that file are certain to be removed and “misplaced” by DOJ lackeys at the direction of Lanny Breuer, Attorney General Eric Holder’s personal Department of Justice toady? A third rifle has already disappeared from the murder scene, and three illegals known to have been armed while accompanying Osorio-Arellanes on the night of the killing have been deported, charged only with immigration violations by the U.S. Immigration Service.

But the continuing saga of the Regime’s cover-up is not limited to the sudden disappearance of case files.

In 2010, ATF agents in El Paso, Texas, confiscated a number of firearms found to have been purchased via the now infamous Phoenix Fast and Furious network of FBI-financed straw buyers. But Phoenix ATF Group Supervisor David Voth and Field Agent Hope MacAllister, known by El Paso to have engineered the sales while helping run Fast and Furious, refused to assist the Texas-based ATF office in the prosecution of the case. In fact, Phoenix ATF office head Bill Newell is reported to have called the El Paso ATF, demanding they “stand down.”

This recalcitrance precipitated an El Paso-generated e-mail, threatening subpoenas for the Phoenix agent’s testimony just two days after the murder of Brian Terry. This e-mail is a story in itself which will be explored later this week on CoachIsRight.com when the remainder of the facts concerning its sender have come in.

But the question now is why? Why did the Phoenix ATF refuse to assist agents in Texas with their case? Was it some childish unwillingness to share in the glory of the capture, given that it was the Phoenix office that was responsible for the very existence of the firearm evidence?

Or was it the fact that these weapons were not supposed to have been taken by federal agents in the first place? After all, ATF and ICE agents had been ordered on numerous occasions to “stand down” and allow weapons to disappear across the Mexican border. Had these El Paso agents unknowingly arrested gun-runners and interdicted the passage of firearms across the border against the wishes of Phoenix U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, Phoenix ATF head Bill Newell, and the Department of Justice itself?

Were the creators of Fast and Furious concerned that the prosecution of these men could lead to any number of questions which the Regime did not want raised, much less answered?

The Terrys lost a son, Brian’s wife lost a husband, and his children lost their father. Yet the Obama Regime plays a game of political cover-up that will shield the guilty from any responsibility for his murder. And the rest of America watches quite helplessly as criminals enjoy federal assistance in the fracture of laws ostensibly designed to protect the public.

The next congressional hearing concerning Fast and Furious takes place on December 8th before the House Committee on Government Oversight. It is high time Republicans file charges against Regime operatives like Bill Newell, Dennis Burke, and Eric Holder. John Boehner must find his backbone and his voice!

The Federal ID that Pays Illegal Aliens Billions a Year

Established 15 years ago, the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number [ITIN] is a seemingly innocuous administrative requirement that the Internal Revenue Service assigns to anyone who is employed and pays taxes. According to the IRS website, the numbers are used for federal tax reporting only. But since ITINs, as they are commonly known, are issued to wage earners regardless of immigration status, they’ve frequently been abused by the aliens who hold them.

Although the real estate crisis is fading from our memory, it’s important to recall that the ITIN was the vehicle used in lieu of Social Security numbers, which then legitimized the disastrous lending policy of providing home mortgages to unqualified illegal aliens. With bankers as their willing abettors, and while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation purposely looked the other way, aliens took out home loans using ITINs as their major form of identification. Bankers, only too-eager to accommodate poverty-level applicants with balloon financing for homes they could barely make the first payment on, raked in big money. To the bankers, aliens represented the “new market.” Today, five years later, the nation is still reeling from the avalanche of foreclosures that followed.

For aliens, the ITIN is an extremely useful vehicle. Since the IRS isn’t required to share its information with any other federal agency, including immigration authorities, the promise of intra-agency confidentiality allows aliens to file tax returns without fear of deportation. At the same time, holding an ITIN enables aliens to authenticate their presence in the United States and prove that they have paid taxes. This information could be crucial if Congress ever enacted an amnesty.

The ITIN’s improper use is once again in the news. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, in its recent analysis entitled “Treasury Department Says Illegal Aliens Collection Billions in Tax Credits,” revealed that according to the Department of Treasury’s Inspector General, more than $4.2 billion in additional child credits were paid out in 2010 to illegal immigrants. In 2005, the pay outs totaled $924 million. This program allows low income earners to claim a $1,000 per child credit. If the household ends up with no additional tax obligation—as most alien families do not—then $1,000 is paid to them.

Pursuant to the IG report, 72 percent of tax returns filed by ITIN users claimed this credit compared to just 14 percent of returns filed with social security numbers. The generous payment of these benefits represents yet another incentive for aliens to enter, reside and work in the United States without permission. Providing incentives to aliens, financial or otherwise, is against the law.

The ITIN is a sham that should be eliminated. The federal government knows that many ITIN users are illegally in the United States. Automatic acceptance of the ITIN without additional identification is tantamount to endorsing illegal immigration.

At a time when Congress and the president are struggling to find ways to cut trillions of dollars from federal spending, and while more than 14 million Americans are unemployed, it’s unconscionable for the IRS to ignore abuse of its ITIN program that results in billions of dollars in payments made to illegal aliens.

THE “Admiral Kuznetsov” class aircraft carrier is currently off the coast of Malta and heading for eastern Mediterranean from their base in the Barents Sea.

The exercises are slated to begin on the 28th November and last a week.

Commentators say that Russia is determined to send the message that they have invested interests in the region and will secure them.

It is understood that the aircraft carrier is carrying 24-fixed wing planes and a number of helicopters. It has also been reported in the press that the Russian navy may request to use port facilities at Limassol.

The radio report also claimed that three Russian destroyers are currently anchored off the Syrian coast. Russia’s naval supply and maintenance site near Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus will be modernized to accommodate heavy warships after 2012, the Russian Navy chief said earlier this week.

“Tartus will be developed as a naval base. The first stage of development and modernization will be completed in 2012,” Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky said, adding it could then serve as a base for guided-missile cruisers and even aircraft carriers. [link to www.defencegreece.com]

So the 3 Russian Navy ships anchoring in the Syrian waters, are not there to defend Syria…, but rather the oil investment…

Is the U.S. About to Invade Syria … and Pick a Fight with China and Russia?

“The U.S. Embassy in Damascus urged its citizens in Syria to depart “immediately,” and Turkey’s foreign ministry urged Turkish pilgrims to opt for flights to return home from Saudi Arabia to avoid traveling through Syria.”

For the first time in many months, [the aircraft carrier] CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked… right next to Syria.

Zero Hedge noted yesterday that a No-Fly zone over Syria – the first concrete step towards war these days – may be imminent.

The American People Don’t War War … But a Syrian War Was Planned 10 Years Ago

Just 12% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the United States should get more directly involved in the Syrian crisis, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-six percent (66%) think the United States should leave the Syrian situation alone.

Though Turkey’s government has a long history of supporting the Assad regime, the government has not only condemned Assad but has vigorously backed the more militaristic rebel factions in Syria, allowing the Free Syrian Army to set up shop in Istanbul and providing access to their commanders through the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

NATO conceals preparations for military action against Syria

by TheTotalCollapse.com on November 24, 2011

The United States has decided to disengage itself from certain obligations on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). In particular, the USA will no longer inform Russia about the plans connected with the redeployment of its forces. Those restrictions are not touching upon any other country.

“Today the United States announced in Vienna, Austria, that it would cease carrying out certain obligations under the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty with regard to Russia. This announcement in the CFE Treaty’s implementation group comes after the United States and NATO Allies have tried over the past 4 years to find a diplomatic solution following Russia’s decision in 2007 to cease implementation with respect to all other 29 CFE States. Since then, Russia has refused to accept inspections and ceased to provide information to other CFE Treaty parties on its military forces as required by the Treaty,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Tuesday.

According to her, the USA does not refuse from the dialogue with Russia within the scope of the Treaty. However, Russia must get back to the institution of the CFE, the US diplomat added.

Nuland also said that the United States did not intend to tie the CFE with the missile defense talks.

The remarks from the US diplomat look like another attempt to turn everything up side down again. It is worth mentioning here that the first edition of the CFE Treaty was signed in 1990, during the existence of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The document stipulated a reduction of the number of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery (larger than 100 mm in caliber), combat planes and helicopters, as well as information exchange.

A renewed variant of the treaty was signed in 1999. The new edition reflected such changes in Europe as the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the expansion of NATO. However, only Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan ratified the new treaty. Russia moved a big part of its arms behind the Ural mountains, but the Western countries did not even want to execute it. The expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance continued, and NATO neared Russian borders.

At the end of 2007, Vladimir Putin decided to suspend Russia’s participation in the CFE until the USA and its European allies ratified the renewed variant of the treaty. The Americans did not want to make any moves in that direction. Now they have decided not to inform Russia about the redeployment of its forces. This is obviously another violation of the treaty which the United States committed.

What consequences may Russia face as a result of the US decision? Pravda.Ru asked expert opinion from the director of the Center for Military Forecasts, Anatoly Tsyganok.

“The USA will stop informing Russia about military redeployments. The Americans can technically send their troops to Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, which did not sign the treaty. Will the Baltic states turn into an uncontrollable military center near Russia’s borders?”

“When Russia suspended its participation in the CFE Treaty, she had the right to say that some NATO’s newcomers, such as the Baltic states and Slovenia, had never signed the treaty. Now NATO eyes Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and all other former members of the Warsaw Pact.

“When they were deciding on the unification of Germany in 1990, Germany and France said in the appendix to the adequate agreement that NATO would not move beyond the Oder River (the river separates Germany and Poland – ed.). However, the West does not take this appendix into consideration. They only follow the agreement itself, which does not say a word about the non-expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance. It just so happens that the USA and its allies played a trick on Russia.

“Why did it take the United States four years to decide not to inform Russia about military redeployments?”

“Apparently, it is connected with the situation in the Mediterranean Sea. One may assume that NATO will create a military group near Russia’s southern borders to strike Syria. They will most likely raise this issue at the NATO summit in December. They will try to analyze Syria’s actions in case NATO conducts a military operation against the country, like it already happened in Libya.”

“Is Russia a big obstacle for conducting NATO’s operation against Syria? Does the USA have anything to conceal from us at this point?”

“Russia is an obstacle, yes. We have a naval base in Syria’s Tartus. The base is protected with air defense complexes, so the chances for aggression from NATO or Israel from the sea are slim. If they decide to attack, it will most likely happen from the side of Saudi Arabia. So the USA has something to conceal.

“There is another aspect to this. There are approximately 120,000 Russian citizens living in Syria. Presumably, it goes about Russian women, who married local men. Russia can use this detail to interfere into the events in Syria. In addition, 20 percent of the Russian defense complex will simply tip off the perch in case Russia loses the Syrian market. It is not ruled out that they are regrouping NATO forces to get ready for the war against Syria, and they don’t want to notify Russia of that.”

‘One day, we’ll kill all the Jews’

Rick Moran

American Thinker

Yes, that’s the call from a Muslim Brotherhood rally after Friday prayers in Cairo. If anyone thinks the so-called “Arab Spring” hasn’t altered the landscape against Israel in the Middle East, they should start listening to the Islamists in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, and other nations where the Brotherhood, the Salifists, and other radical extremists will be running governments. Throw in an Iran with hegemonistic designs on the region armed with nuclear weapons and you have a recipe for years of tension and perhaps worse.

A Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo’s most prominent mosque Friday turned into a venomous anti-Israel protest, with attendants vowing to “one day kill all Jews.”

Some 5,000 people joined the rally, called to promote the “battle against Jerusalem’s Judaization.” The event coincided with the anniversary of the United Nations’ partition plan in 1947, which called for the establishment of a Jewish state.

However, most worshippers who prayed at the mosque Friday quickly left it before the Muslim Brotherhood’s rally got underway. A group spokesman urged attendants to remain for the protest, asking them not to create a bad impression for the media by leaving.

Speakers at the event delivered impassioned, hateful speeches against Israel, slamming the “Zionist occupiers” and the “treacherous Jews.” Upon leaving the rally, worshippers were given small flags, with Egypt’s flag on one side and the Palestinian flag on the other, as well as maps of Jerusalem’s Old City detailing where “Zionists are aiming to change Jerusalem’s Muslim character.”

Propaganda material ahead of Egypt’s parliamentary elections was also handed out at the site.

Someone drawing up a worst case scenario for Israel’s interests a year ago could hardly have imagined their version of this nightmare coming true.

Mainstream media turn blind eye to dark side of Tahrir Square

Leo Rennert

American Thinker

At the beginning, most mainstream media turned into cheerleaders for the Arab Spring revolutions to topple secular dictatorships like Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. Once Mubarak was gone, the story line went, democracy and respect for human rights would flourish. It didn’t quite happen that way. The Muslim Brotherhood emerged instead as a potent replacement force.

More recently, thousands again demonstrated in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, staging a second revolution – this time to get rid of military rule. Once the military are ousted, the new story line goes, political parties of varying stripes could take over and usher in a new era of parliamentary democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood is generally portrayed as just another political party. We are assured that it isn’t a homogeneous, fanatical Islamist movement. Instead, it’s supposedly comprised of many political shades and needn’t be feared in any potential governing coalition, even if it were to become the dominant player.

As in past years, when newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post bent over backwards to portray Hamas and Hez’ballah in the kindest possible light and sanitized them of any semblance of terrorist fantaticism, now it’s the turn of the Muslim Brother to get this kind of media whitewash.

So, it should come as no surprise that when the Muslim Brotherhood staged a rally this week in the most prominent Cairo Mosque and thousands of its followers chorused to “kill all the Jews” and volunteered for “jihad” to liberate all of Palestine – i.e. exterminate the Jewish state – most mainstream media, whether leading newspapers or the evening TV network news, generally gave this event a pass. Never mind that it revealed an ominous side of the Muslim Brotherhood’s real agenda and cast a dark cloud over Egypt’s adherence to its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. It just didn’t fit the more favorable perception of the Muslim Brotherhood peddled by mainstream media.

The same inattentiveness by prominent media outlets left largely unreported two more sexual assaults of female journalists covering the tumult in Tahrir Square and other Egyptian hot spots. Never mind that Caroline Sinz, a journalist for the TV France 3 network, and Mona Al-Taditawy, an Egyptian-American reporter, told harrowing tales of multiple sexual assaults amid the latest revolutionary upheavals against Egypt’s military rulers. Never mind that Reporters Without Borders, an international journalism group, issued an advisory to media editors and publishers not to send female journalists anywhere near Tahrir Square, making it clear that last February’s rape of CBS News reporter Lara Logan was not an isolated threat. With their fixation and preference for an end to military rule, mainstream media largely ignored the not-so-happy fate that may await women under a new set of rulers for Egypt.

It’s not as if there has been a total media blackout of the recurrence of sexual assaults in revolutionary Egypt or the Muslim Brotherhood’s undisguised animus against Jews. UPI and AP filed some dispatches. So did CNN and Politico. But the Saturday, Nov.26 edition of the Washington Post kept these incidents from its subscribers – as did other prominent media that usually pride themselves of being ahead of the curve and serve as models for the rest of the media pack.

LEO RENNERT

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers

Friedrich Nietzsche and His Proto-Nazi Eco-Fascism

In his youth, second only to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Adolf Hitler treasured the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were early German forerunners of what could be easily characterized as a natural existentialism. Both men argued that nature or existence is so permeated with the natural driving force of will that it essentially trumps all human thought and rationality. Such a natural or existential outlook on the thinking man was a precursor to the Nazi “will to power” ideology. This was perfectly showcased in LeniRiefenstahl’s (1902-2003) notorious documentary film Triumph of the Will.

Hitler’s lifelong fascination with Nietzsche is corroborated by the fact that the Nazis essentially made the Nietzsche Archives of Weimar the official shrine of their regime in 1933. Even as late as 1944, the green Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) went so far as to say that Nietzsche was the spiritual inspiration of Hitler.

Nature and philosophical existentialism were used by Nietzsche to disguise his hatred for Christianity since the heavenly emphasis of the latter mocked the earth and its real flesh-and-blood existence. The Nazis followed suit. While Hitler seldom criticized Christianity publicly, he privately discussed his aversion toward the church before his henchmen.

On September 23, 1941, Hitler said, “[T]o make death easier for people, the Church holds out to them the bait of a better world. We, for our part, confine ourselves to asking man to fashion his life worthily. For this, it is sufficient for him to conform to the laws of nature. Let’s seek inspiration in these principles, and in the long run we’ll triumph over religion.” Such sentiments easily sum up in very simple language the entire philosophy of Nietzsche.

In his most personal work called Thus Spake Zarathustra, written from the spectacular Engadine Alps, Nietzsche’s hero, Zarathustra, blurts out, “I beseech you my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of other worldly hopes!” In fact, as far as Nietzsche was concerned, the Earth itself has replaced God. One must now avoid sinning against the Earth rather than against God. This is not far removed from Hitler’s own remarks in Mein Kampf: “when man attempts to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, he comes into struggle with the principles to which he himself owes his existence as a man.”

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, the earth’s existence is used by Nietzsche specifically to contrast it with heaven and heaven’s otherworldly emphasis. Nietzsche’s infamous “God is dead” anti-theology is inextricably bound up with this earthly existentialism. He was also convinced that the end product of 2,500 years of Western philosophy has shown that there is no such thing as absolute truth. As such, modern man must learn to live in a world filled with skepticism, relativism, and nihilism.

Nietzsche wanted to replace what he calls the Christian slave morality of weakness and meekness with strong masculine values like heroism, strength, and courage. This is the heart of Nietzsche’s “beyond good and evil” doctrine. Since the Christian God of meekness is now dead, men must become supermen in order to legislate a new set of values for the future based on biology and instinct rather than upon Christianity or Western rationality.

Nietzsche believed that the weakest part of man was his consciousness. Biology, body, and instinct were the strengths of man and must be promoted by the aristocratic supermen of the future. Such an instinctual and physical emphasis also assumes that war and conflict will be at the vortex of human evolution. Just as nature weeds out the weak from the strong in the predator/prey relationship, so too must humanity do the same through state prescribed breeding programs.

In Hitler’s lesser-known second book called Secret Book, he wrote that though religious ascetics deny natural instinct, “[t]he fact of his own existence is already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which determined its coming into being. As soon as the human mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys that real substance which is the bearer of the mind.” Such an amazing quotation from the Führer strongly reflects the existential influence of Nietzsche.

In the mid-1930s, Englishman Anthony Ludovici (1882-1971), an expert on Nietzsche and translator of many of his works, visited the Third Reich. Ludovici wrote glowingly of his visit to Nazi Germany. He gave his personal opinion on how much Nietzsche’s influential philosophy could be witnessed in the new Germany. He even spoke of “Hitler’s sincere and earnest admiration of Nietzsche’s philosophy.”

Ludovici was most impressed with the Nazi “back to the land” movement. The Nazis began setting up labor camps all over the Reich to help make Germany become more arable with a racist, local-only green farmer policy. Under the SS leadership of Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) and Richard Walter Darre (1895-1953), the Nazis concocted a green racist collectivist program designed to re-ruralize Germany and thus root the economy into the soil of the homeland. They believed that this program would save Germany from the cultural degeneracy of the Jewified international city by developing a hearty and healthy people close to the land.

Ludovici said that the Nazis selected desirable people along strict biological lines to resettle the countryside. He pointed out that the Labor Service slowed down the great migrations to the cities. This was viewed very positively because he believed that modern city life destroyed the natural biological health of the nation. It also artificially uprooted people from the existential realities of nature and made them dependent upon the political chaos of profit and labor created by the capitalists and the socialists. Ludovici believed that urbanization, industrialism, religion, and the anti-existential emphasis of Western philosophy since Socrates (469-399 B.C.) were quickly leading Europe to biological ruin because of the impact of the Industrial Revolution. Ludovici was thus very impressed with what the Nazis were doing.

While many scholars have been well aware of Nazi biological scientism, few (see Dr. Stephen Hicks’s Nietzsche and the Nazis) have bothered to connect National Socialism with existential philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. This oversight is due primarily to the fact that most scholars focus exclusively on the racism of the Nazis apart from the overarching historical context of other critical matters that were churning in the cultural background of Germany throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. What many have either overlooked, or simply refused to accept, is that Nazi racism and eugenics were based on a philosophy of man and nature that borrowed just as much from the naturalism of the evolutionary sciences as it did from the natural existentialism of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. While there are certainly important nuances that can be stressed to separate men like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer from National Socialism, such distinctions are not enough to protect them from the charge of proto-Nazism.

November 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In 1997, I began working at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic as a young, idealistic college student who strongly believed in what I had been told about the organization, that I would be helping other young women access safe and affordable health care.

But I quickly came to learn that the message Planned Parenthood advertised did not reflect reality. I was disillusioned by the betrayal that was perpetrated against patients and the public alike.

My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive health.

I began to recognize their emphasis on performing abortions each time a woman would express concern or have second thoughts about having an abortion. When I notified management, though, they told me not to worry and encourage her decision to move ahead with the procedure.

Thankfully, the truth is being exposed. Sexual abuse of minor girls and exploitation of the poor and minorities is concealed or ignored, all in the name of more abortions.

Planned Parenthood has gone to great lengths to fool the public into thinking that abortions make up only “3 percent of services provided” in their clinics. In reality, according to its most recent report, abortion patients constitute 12 percent of all Planned Parenthood clients, or 332,000 of 3 million unduplicated clients.

They used my misunderstanding of what the organization stood for to encourage me to perform and assist in a practice that makes up 98 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services to pregnant women.

In fact, clinic workers would purposefully avoid providing information on fetal development, what the child looked like, the child’s anatomical development and the pain he or she could feel. I was continuously reminded that when referring to the baby, the appropriate terminology was “clump of cells” or “contents of the uterus.”

Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can. Those in charge know that can’t be accomplished if they refer to the child as a “baby.”

Then women would know what was really growing inside them: a little person with a beating heart, functioning nervous system, tiny hands and feet. The child is entirely disregarded. There is no counseling, no care, no waiting and no discussion. Once a pregnancy is confirmed, it is off to termination.

Planned Parenthood takes specific advantage of women who are too young or misinformed to know better than to trust them with their well-being. Those who know the truth have a duty to speak out.

Do not be fooled by their sound bites and statistical manipulations. Planned Parenthood is not “pro-women,” as it claims to be. It is pro-abortion. It does not stand for women. It stands for ending our pregnancies. Women are treated as commodities, not as human beings.

We must shed light on what Planned Parenthood actually does. It spends millions of dollars each year to ensure that the American taxpayer will continue subsidizing its abortion services.

Last year, Planned Parenthood’s efforts bought in a record $363 million in government funding. It generates so much by making false claims about how public funding reduces the number of abortions.

But the numbers tell a different story. From 2000 to 2009, Planned Parenthood saw an 80 percent increase in taxpayer funding and a 69 percent increase in the number of abortions it performed.

Women deserve better.
Catherine Anthony Adair is a former employee of Planned Parenthood and a Massachusetts resident. This column originally appeared in the Washington Examiner and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

CALGARY, Alberta, November 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A judge has acquitted a controversial pro-family activist from a July 2008 charge of trespassing at a Canadian university. William (Bill) Whatcott was arrested by campus security at the University of Calgary and put into a holding cell for distributing a pamphlet that addressed the “harmful consequences” of homosexuality.

Whatcott, in an email to LifeSiteNews, called the ruling a “victory for all Canadians who value freedom of expression and religious liberty on our university campuses.”

Judge J.D. Bascom ruled from the Provincial Court of Alberta on November 15th that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “applies” to the University of Calgary since “the University is not a Charter free zone.”

Section 2.b of the Charter states that everyone has the “fundamental freedoms [of] thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

The University had argued that the Charter only applied to “government actors and government actions,” not to the University itself since it was a private entity.

But the judge found that the University carried out “specific” governmental work by providing post-secondary education to the public in Alberta, making its actions subject to scrutiny under the Charter.

“The university is the vehicle through which the government offers individuals the opportunity to participate in the post-secondary education system,” the judge said.

“Mr. Whatcott entered the university property with a purpose to distribute his literature to students, staff and public,” said the judge, adding, “Traditionally, universities have been places for the exchange of ideas” and the “concept of free expression is part of the University of Calgary philosophy.”

“His activity was peaceful and presented no harm to the university structures or those who frequented the campus. … Although Mr. Whatcott’s pamphlet is not scholarly, freedom of speech is not limited to academic works.”

In conclusion, Judge Bascom found that “the means used by campus security halted Mr. Whatcott’s distribution of these flyers and violated his right of free expression.”

The judge also lifted the University’s ban against Whatcott that would have indefinitely prohibited him from setting foot on the campus again, stating that the ban was “arbitrary and unfair.”

“Preventing the peaceful distribution of leaflets that an individual attendee finds offensive does not relate to an objective that is pressing and substantial,” said the judge.

Whatcott argued on his blog that the content of the flier handed out that day— which was not an issue in the case, but which he believes was largely behind the motive for his arrest — was “strongly worded and provocative, but not hateful.”

“Some homosexual activists” he pointed out, “call criticism of any aspect of their sexual practices and political activities ‘hate.’ The ‘hate’ word is so abused and misused to bully people who disagree with leftist agendas and homosexual activism into silence, that the word is almost meaningless in the politically correct context.”

Whatcott says he knows that some are “uncomfortable” with his style of activism, but argues that it is scripturally justified.

“I believe conservatism is good, but sometimes conservatives are so conservative, unimaginative and fearful, they set themselves up to lose in the culture wars and when we lose children suffer, freedom suffers, and foundational Biblical truth suffers.”

Whatcott told the Calgary Herald that he already has plans for visiting other campuses with his pamphlets.

“We were at Carleton University in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago and we’ll be visiting campuses with our point of view in the near future — U of Alberta, U of Calgary, Grant MacEwan. They are all a concern to me. They are very homogenous in the professors they hire, to discriminate against speech that displays conservative Christian values,” he said.

Homosexual activists ‘increasingly aggressive’: Family Research Council

WASHINGTON, DC, November 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homosexual activists have becoming “increasingly aggressive” in attacking their opponents and in shutting down any debate, but despite their efforts “there are legitimate grounds for debate on the origin, nature, and consequences of homosexuality,” argues a new analysis from the Family Research Council.

Homosexual activists “misunderstand (or misrepresent) the views of social conservatives, in part because of conflicting paradigms for understanding homosexuality,” says FRC Senior Fellow for Policy Studies in a press release announcing the publication of the report, titled, “Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views.”

The conflicting paradigms Sprigg addresses have created a disconnect and fundamental misunderstanding between those promoting homosexuality and social conservatives, who see the homosexualist agenda encroaching upon fundamental freedoms.

Homosexualist groups “have come to adopt a view of homosexuality we might call the ‘gay identity’ paradigm,” Sprigg observes. He explains that the foundations of the “gay identity” paradigm are beliefs that sexual orientation is an innate personal characteristic, like race, and that there is no harm in being homosexual.

“Based on these beliefs (or, in many cases, unspoken presuppositions), gay activist groups declare, and some others have come to accept, that for someone to believe that heterosexuality is preferable to homosexuality is equivalent to believing that one race is superior to another, and therefore represents a form of bigotry and even ‘hate’ toward gays and lesbians as individuals,” Sprigg states.

“However, this conclusion about critics of homosexuality cannot be valid unless the presuppositions of the ‘gay identity’ paradigm are empirically true.”

“Yet the empirical case for the ‘gay identity’ paradigm is weak – science has not found that homosexuality is determined by biological or genetic factors, and there is an abundance of evidence that sexual orientation can change.”

The paradigm of social conservatives, on the other hand, is based not on “gay identity” but rather on the “homosexual conduct paradigm.”

The paper deals in depth with the origins of same-sex attraction and the evidence of successful treatment of unwanted same-sex attraction an analysis. It also provides evidence of the physical and mental harms, including the specific issue of child sexual abuse, associated with homosexual conduct, and discusses the issue of homosexuality in relation to religion.

Sprigg concludes: “In recent years, and even more so in recent months, public discussions about the issue of homosexuality have taken an ominous turn – those demanding public affirmation of homosexual conduct and relationships have begun to abandon the methods of honest and respectful debate, and demand that no debate on the issue of homosexuality be permitted.

“Yet there are legitimate grounds for debate on the origin, nature, and consequences of homosexuality. That debate should continue, with a respect for honest research and for freedom of thought, speech, and religion.”

The full text of “Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views” is available from the Family Research Council website here.

Russia WTO accession sparks debate over human-rights legislation

Russia’s expected invitation to join the World Trade Organization next month has ignited debate in Congress on a bill that targets Russian human-rights abuse and a trade law that could hurt U.S. businesses.

The debate over punishing Russian human-rights abusers and voiding a Cold War-era trade law poses a test for the Obama administration’s “reset” in relations with the former Soviet republic.

As a WTO member, Russia would enjoy regulated access to U.S. markets, even as Moscow has backslid on democratic reforms by cracking down on dissenters, limiting opposition and restricting the press.

Russia has threatened to end cooperation with the U.S. on Iran sanctions and Afghan transit if the U.S. implements the proposed Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.

The bipartisan bill would deny U.S. visas to Russian officials implicated in human-rights abuses and freeze assets they hold in the United States.

Named for a whistleblowing Russian lawyer who was arrested and tortured to death in 2009, the Magnitsky Act also would require the State Department to make its blacklist public and respond to congressional inquiries about names not on the list.

Russia has threatened to retaliate with its own blacklist, targeting U.S. officials involved in the prosecution of Russian citizens such as arms dealer Viktor Bout and drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have made no public statements on the Magnitsky Act, but senior administration officials privately have warned bill supporters that Moscow’s reaction to its passage could have negative consequences.

An aide to a Democratic senator who backs the bill said administration officials have opposed it “in as quiet a way as possible because … all our legislative push is doing is saying, ‘If you’re a gross violator of human rights, you shouldn’t have the privilege of an American visa, and if you’re parking your ill-gotten gains in our banking system, we will freeze them.’

“We know Russia’s Interior Ministry is strongly against this — we expect that — but to my mind, our only opponents really are corrupt Russian officials and those whom they succeed in scaring, which could be certain people at the State Department,” the aide said.

But he told The Washington Times that he was heartened by the administration’s July announcement that it would deny visas to Russian officials involved in the Magnitsky case.

“Respect for human rights is a cornerstone of our foreign policy,” Mr. Kerry said. “The committee is deeply concerned about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky, and I strongly support the administration’s decision to use its authority to bar human-rights abusers from coming to the U.S.”

The push for new protections of Russian human rights comes as the administration seeks to retire an old one: the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which bars normal trade relations with countries that restrict free emigration.

Administration officials have warned that failing to end Jackson-Vanik’s applicability to Russia would keep U.S. businesses from reaping the full benefits of its WTO membership. Russia’s $2.2 trillion-a-year economy is the world’s seventh largest.

Given the collapse of Russian democracy, though, some administration officials — including Michael McFaul, ambassador-designate to Russia – have conceded the need for a human-rights replacement to Jackson-Vanik.

“Let’s have another act,” Mr. McFaul said in April. “Call it the Jackson-Vanik Act of 2011.”

But asked about the comment for the record by Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, Mr. McFaul retreated to administration talking points, saying that Jackson-Vanik had “served its historic purpose by helping thousands of Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union” and vowing that the U.S. would continue funding Russian civil-society groups and raising human-rights concerns with Russian officials.

Pavel Khodorkovksy — son of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil magnate who bankrolled the Russian opposition before being jailed in 2003 — told The Times that he supports gradually releasing Russia from Jackson-Vanik, but only if the Magnitsky Act is passed.

He said the Russian opposition is closely monitoring the bill’s fate.

“It’s viewed probably as one of the only things right now that can push the country in the right direction from the outside because there are very few real levers that could be used by foreign governments to impact what’s happening in Russia today,” Mr. Khodorkovksy said, lamenting that “human-rights considerations have been pushed aside” since the reset.

Maneuvering over Jackson-Vanik and Magnitsky comes amid Russia’s ongoing conflict with neighboring Georgia about the latter’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Georgia ended its hold on Russia’s accession Nov. 10, after the sides agreed to a Swiss-mediated pact providing for international monitors to track the flow of goods between Russia and the two regions.

Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergi Kapanadze, who led Georgia in the negotiations, told The Times that he believes Russia’s WTO membership could serve Georgia’s interests.

“We’re happy we got this agreement because [international monitoring] is something we have been pressing for,” he said. “It’s important that Russia join the WTO because all trade disputes and trade-related issues we have can now be addressed in the WTO dispute-resolution mechanism.”

Russia will be invited to become the WTO’s 154th member at the body’s ministerial meeting that begins in Geneva on Dec. 15. Russia’s membership will become official 30 days after ratification by its parliament, which is likely to come early next year.

Democrat Racism

– Michael Oberndorf, RPA Saturday, November 26, 2011

Canada Free Press

Let me begin by recalling an afternoon in the summer of 1955, when I was 11 years-old. I had gone to the movies in Bethesda, Maryland, and found that there was a group of picketers outside the Heiser Theater, calling on the owner to desegregate. In those days, black people had to sit in the balcony, separate from the white people sitting on the main floor, below. A neighbor was one of the picketers, so I joined in, too, having been raised to believe that character and actions, not skin color, was what differentiates people. I believed it then, and I believe it now.

It was another nine years before Republicans got Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, and ten for the Voting Rights Act. Democrats like senators Albert Gore, Sr., William Fulbright, and one-time KKK kleagle Robert Byrd fought against both until the bitter end. Across the south, segregationist Democrat governors like George Wallace, Lester “Axe-handle” Maddox, Ross Barnett, and Ernest Hollings ruled with iron fists.

Even the Supreme Court was stained by a racist Democrat. Hugo Black, like Byrd, was a former KKK zealot. As a Democrat senator, he even led a filibuster against an anti-lynching measure. A staunch supporter and ally of FDR, he was appointed to the Supreme Court, and wrote the opinion supporting FDR’s racist interment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Today, Democrats are still racist, but have managed, though their control of the “mainstream” media, to disguise this ugly fact.

It’s been pointed out by many conservatives, including brilliant ones like Thomas Sowell and Walter Washington, the Democrat programs like “affirmative action” are inherently racist. They are built on the premise that black people are too stupid, too incompetent, too lazy to succeed on their own. They can only get an education, a job, a mortgage with the help of – white liberals! Frankly, I think this is where much of the anger and black hatred of white people comes from. Consciously, or subconsciously, they hate the fact that they have been suckered by white Democrats onto the Democrat Plantation. They know they aren’t stupid, incompetent, or lazy, but are trapped in what amounts to slavery in a government dependency system from which escape is very difficult.

But in the Democrat’s desperation to hold onto the power that they see rapidly slipping from their grasp as Barry Obama-Soetoro tries to make an affirmative action presidency work, the media have panicked and lost their cool. The attacks on popular conservative presidential candidate Herman Cain have been heavy-handed, co-ordinated, and clearly racist.

Frankly, I don’t believe any of the so-called “sexual harassment” charges. Just look at the source. David Axelrod has done this kind of thing in Obama-Soetoro’s elections in the past, and lives in the same apartment building as one of the accusers. The Democrats tried this with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, claiming harassment of a black woman, and it failed. This time, the women claiming harassment are all white. In the Democrat south, a black man sexually assaulting a white women was lynched, as often as not. This is the post-modern, liberal verison.

I personally hope that Mr. Cain dismisses the “charges” as the lies and gross exaggerations they clearly appear to be. Though I don’t agree with him on everything – who does agree with anyone on everything? – I think he would make an excellent president. He’s a solid conservative with no ties to the globalists – like Gingrich and his longtime membership in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – no connection to the global warming fraud – like Gingrich and Romney – and, as the media have made crystal clear, generates fear and loathing from the left.

Another staunch conservative black man who has been viciously attacked by racist Democrats is the man I really wish were running for president, Lt. Col. Allen West, currently a Republican congressman from Florida. West was singled out for a verbal attack that many believe came solely because he is a black conservative, for his stance on Medicare, by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “congressperson” and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee. Like a true Democrat, she waited until he had left the floor to make her attack.

The fearless and forthright West responded, calling her the “…most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up.” Liberals went ballistic. I love this guy!

So, next time a Democrat tries to play the race card or starts name-calling, turn it around on ‘em. Remind them that conservatives, like Martin Luther King, want a country where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.

UN plan referenced by Newt Gingrich is a real threat to private property and US sovereignty

What is Agenda 21?

– Chris Carter Sunday, November 20, 2011

Canada Free Press

“Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on Earth…it calls for specific changes in the activities of all people… Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced… ” – Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993).

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated during a recent campaign event that the United Nations was seeking to create an “extraconstitutional control” over the US with programs like Agenda 21. Gingrich’s remarks are featured in a YouTube video. But what is Agenda 21 and why has it taken nearly 20 years before this subject got national recognition?

Agenda 21 seeks to control populations through zoning and seizure of private property, strip national sovereignty, reduce the world population, even control our consumption of meat and air conditioning … all in the name of the environment. And who can be against the environment, right?

Many Americans cringe at the mention of “global government” or “conspiracy.” And often, conspiracy theories have little basis in fact. But we must recognize that it is a basic element of human nature to seek wealth and power, and that people throughout human history have conspired together to do so. Not all conspiracies are real, but they do exist. And Agenda 21 is a perfect example on a global scale.

From the report produced by the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, which was the predecessor to Agenda 21: “Land…cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice…. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable….”

Our Constitution explicitly protects our private property rights. No wonder President Clinton signed it into law without consent from Congress. In fact, those who drafted the plan considered it to be so toxic that they warned proponents not to use the term Agenda 21.

“Participating in a UN advocated planning process would very likely bring out many of the conspiracy- fixated groups and individuals in our society,” said J. Gary Lawrence, adviser to President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. “This segment of our society who fear ‘one-world government’ and a UN invasion of the United States through which our individual freedom would be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined ‘the conspiracy’ by undertaking [Agenda 21]. So we call our process something else, such as comprehensive planning, growth management or smart growth.”

Rather than defend against the disinformation campaign used to prop up Agenda 21, we must read the document and instead demand why the UN thinks it has any business subjugating the world under its authority when their record is full of epic corruption and humiliating failures.

The Unification Church, otherwise known as The Holy Spirit Association and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owns or is affiliated with several organizations, many with Christian-sounding names.

The organization itself “uses Christian terminology and categories, but the definitions and means are totally different,” said Fred Miller of True Light Educational Ministry in Shirley, N.Y.

Kurt Goedelman, founder of Personal Freedom Outreach, an apologetical ministry that deals with cults, told The Christian Post, “They claim to be Christian but they deny all tenets of Christianity.”

The movement rose to its peak in the 1970s, when the hippie generation embraced the Unification message of peace and love.

“When the hippie culturebecame popular in the 60s, young people turned to alternative religions and one of the new religions was the Unification Church. Moon got enormous attention through his support of Richard Nixon and his followers worked zealously to bring people in to the movement,” James Beverly, of Tyndale University, said in an interview with CP. Followers are sometimes termed “Moonies” due to the founder’s last name, though Miller noted that they consider this term offensive.

“Back then he (Moon) was drawing the kids in. You could see them standing on corners selling roses and trinkets,” said Miller, who has been studying cults for 20 years.

“The Unification movement was popular in the 70s and 80s but membership has gone downhill in the United States and Canada and most parts of the world,” Beverly noted, in part because of Moon’s conviction of tax fraud. However, “Moon has many followers in South Korea and Japan.”

Despite the Unification promotion of peace and love, the movement is not a Christian organization, based on the faith’s primary tenet of having a relationship with Jesus.

“Moon claims that he’s the Messiah. In order to get to heaven, you must be married. Now I don’t know how different you can get from Christianity,” said Miller.

“He (Moon) was also actually ‘crowned’ King of Christianity,” he added.

Craig Branch, director of the Apologetics Resource Center, called the Unification Church “a pseudo-Christian cult,” in an email to CP.

Beverly agreed. “If cult refers to a group that claims to be Christian but is far, far away from clear, main biblical teaching then the Unification Church fits the description,” he said.

“Part of (The Rev. Sun Myung) Moon’s strategy was/is to form conservative political group alliances and therefore credibility with traditional conservative Christians, which unfortunately … had some apparent endorsements from notable Christian leaders. For example the conservative newspaper, The Washington Times, is owned by Moon,” said Branch. The Rev. Jerry Falwell has also been tied with Moon, and interestingly, said Miller, “Ninety-five percent of the sushi in American restaurants is coming out of his factory.”

Many of these have Christian-sounding titles, such as the Christian Heritage Foundation, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the National Prayer and Fast Committee or the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy – the Unification Church is affiliated with all.

“The Unification movement retains the outline, though not always the substance, of classical Christian doctrine,” Beverly states in his book, The Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions. “Divine Principle, the famous Unification ‘Bible,’ has been the centerpiece in Unification evangelism and in-house teaching.”

Divine Principle was penned by the Rev. Moon, with a disciple, and published in 1966. But “Moon has always made it clear that his ongoing teachings and sermons themselves constitute the most important source of modern revelation,” the book clarifies.

“The Unification Movement would see the Bible as an errant book,” Kurt Goedelman, of PFO, pointed out in an interview with CP.

Theologians seem to agree on other key areas where Unificationist teaching clearly departs from Scriptural Christianity: the Fall, the Trinity (including denying Jesus’ sinless nature) and the resurrection of Christ.

“Moon denies the Trinity, minimizes the sovereignty of God, and teaches salvation based partly on human works, including payment for liberating ancestors,” Beverly explained.

Also, “The Unification Church (Sun Myung Moon) teaches that mankind’s Fall was twofold: (1) spiritual and (2) physical,” said Ric Walston, president of Columbia Evangelical Seminary of Washington, in an email to CP.

“(1) The Spiritual Fall: The Unification Church teaches that God wanted Adam and Eve to mature to the point of spiritual perfection before they engaged in sex and had children. If they had done this, they would have been ‘True Parents’ and they would have had perfect children, and, thus, they would have established the kingdom of God on earth,” he wrote. “But, Lucifer seduced Eve and had spiritual sexual relations with her. Their spirit bodies committed fornication. This is what caused the ‘Spiritual Fall.’”

Walston continued:

“(2) The Physical Fall: The Unification Church teaches that in her effort to right this wrong, Eve seduced Adam and they had physical sex. But, Eve was motivated by ‘satanic love’ and Adam and Eve’s children (and all children thereafter) were children of the devil. This physical, sexual union between Adam and Eve is the ‘Physical Fall’ of mankind.”

Walston said that the belief system teaches “Jesus was [the] only person since the Fall who was without sin and so he was to redeem mankind both spiritually and physically. But, Jesus failed his divine mission.”

“The Unification Church centers on Sun Myung Moon as the key Savior and Lord. Jesus is viewed ultimately as someone who failed in his original mission. Unificationists focus on Moon and his Divine Principle and his ongoing teaching. Christians focus on Jesus and the Bible and the Gospel as given by Jesus and his original disciples,” Beverly stated.

Because followers are so heavily indoctrinated and highly devoted to Moon, it is hard to reach them with any other message.

“Defectors are extremely exiled,” Miller noted. “One leader in the Unification church told me that he believed in true Scripture, but if he left the church, ‘I lose my wife, I lose my job, I lose my family, I lose everything.’”

Beverly stressed, “The way to win the Unificationists is through love not coercion.”

“Followers of Sun Myung Moon are usually highly committed to Unification teachings. Consequently, there is not much openness to evangelical Christian faith,” he said. “However, the Unification Church is going through a crisis now because of the split between Moon’s oldest and youngest sons. Further, there are increasing signs of doubt about Moon himself, given the clear evidence of his own failures and those of his family. Given these realities, Christians can witness with love and patience about the supremacy of Jesus as the only Savior and Lord.”

Miller agreed.

“Generally, when I approach any cult member, I don’t tell them their religion is wrong. I take a more confused approach: ‘Wait a minute, I don’t understand, you believe this, but your Scripture says this.’”

He said that when regarding the Unification Church, Christians need to keep in mind Matthew 24 and Luke 13.

“For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many” (Matt 24:5).

“Many will knock on the door, saying Lord, Lord, open unto us, but He will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from’” (Luke 13:25).

Editors’ note: This is the fifth story in a multi-part series examining cults, Christianity and belief systems that claim to be Christianity. The Christian Post will be looking at several belief systems that are commonly associated with Christianity and providing expert opinions and research on those belief systems. While the CP recognizes the issue of semantics when using the words “cult,” and “Christianity,” for our purposes, we are defining those belief systems outside of Christianity whose proponents claim to be Christian to be “cults.”

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“It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after. ”
― Miles Coverdale

God usually does not tell you the whole path. He only tells you the next step.
Therefore your most important step...is your next step.
~Nathaniel Bronner~

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46: 10

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A Crooked Path’s purpose:

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themsevles out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

2 Timothy 2: 24-26

I charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick [living] and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

2 Timothy 4: 1-5

Jehovah Elyon, Yeshua, and the Holy Ghost worked to lead me and bring "A Crooked Path" - both the website and the book about. I thank Them for pushing on my spirit and soul. I thank God daily for sending His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord, as the Sacrificial Lamb for the forgiveness of sin. I live for Their honor and glory. I am Their bond-servant to do Their will, according to The Word of God.